Getting Beat Up and the Weirdest Looking Walleye Ever

I've been on a carp kick lately... fairly typical for this time of year, except I'm on the hunt for some real giants. The first outing in this kick was going to be a yak-attack. I got the kayak out on the home pond in the evening and went looking for some big tailing carp... I found them. You probably can't see her, but there's a fish well over 20lbs there... just the fish I was looking for.

So, I pretty much knew that fish was going to eat my fly given how aggressively she was eating. I also knew I had no chance of landing it. Thick mats of pads all around me, with no open route out... oh yeah, this one was gong to beat the piss out of me. I waited till the fish made the right move, I made a quick drag and drop presentation, and she sucked up the fly decisively. 

And, as predicted, she won the battle and won it very quickly. It broke me off in the pads and continued to just make a huge mess of the flats for another minute or so. I just sat in my kayak and laughed my butt off while she wrecked the place. 

Just a little part of the mess she left.

The rest of the night after that was pretty anticlimactic, though I did catch some fish. The next evening I went to the lake, partly for carp and partly for post-sunset predator hunting. The carp part was interesting. I brought some bread to throw out in this muddy backwater that pretty much always has some carp in it. I tossed out a slice's worth and then spotted a tailing fish a little further up the backwater. It clearly wasn't a big carp but I'm a sucker for tailing fish. It gave me a really good opportunity and the coolest eat I've had in a while, and I've had some really great eats from carp this summer. I set the hook and the fish made almost as big a mess as the one the night before had. I landed this one though. I won't sugar coat it, it was a very ugly fish.

Immediately after releasing that fish I spotted a bigger one working through my bread. Good! I sneaked over and got into position and started a long slow chess game with a fish that might actually have been smarter than me. It ended with the slowest, most incredible refusal I have ever watched. After gently eating two pieces of bread the fish came up to examine my fly. It examined it for about 15 seconds before it decided to grab it. Then it calmly closed it's lips just around the edge of the fly and slowly pulled in under. It sat there, just under the surface, moving my fly around in its mouth, for more than a minute. I just sat there waiting for it to get the hook inside its mouth and it never did. It eventually let go of the fly and swam away. Jeez. 

I didn't really feel like carp fishing in the dark, so I went to target the predators. I went to a rocky point that can be good for bass and walleye. I fished a secret fly one a slow hand twist retrieve along that point. Three casts in I got a take that felt just like every walleye take I've ever had. The fish then started to do slow sweeping head shakes and short runs. I was certain at that point that it was a walleye. I was pretty happy, I haven't caught many walleye so far this year. It came up to the surface and did more classic walleye stuff. It came to the bank and I still hadn't noticed anything odd. Then I went to grab it. This was by far the weirdest looking walleye I've ever caught.

In all seriousness, that was a really nice smallmouth that fought just like an 18 inch walleye. I hope the next one that size fights harder than that.

This morning I was back at it again. This is the only good thing that came out of it: